This is Revell's model of the bristol beaufighter.
The beaufighter was invented in much the same way as I make some of my models,
the bristol designers took the wings, engines and tail of the bristol beaufort
which was a light bomber and made a new fuselage which contained four 20 mm cannon.
The beaufighter also had 6 0.303 in machine guns in the wings and was adapted
for many roles including the torpedo carrying variant this model depicts.
Revell's kit is typical of all other Revell kits of the
late 70's in that while all the shapes are there and everything works OK
there are very few details especially in the cockpit. while this would be OK in
a 1/72 scale aircraft this is a 1/32 scale giant. Don't ask me why I bought it
I should have gone for the tamiya product which offers more variants and proper
interior detail. However the special edition kit with all the photoetch and vacform
parts can be quite a good model provided you scratch build a navigators compartment
(the one included is totally wrong) and disregard the instructions which tell
you to put a thimble nose on the coastal command 455 sqdn aircraft because all
my research tells me they didn't have one.
The kit is quite straight forward once you have the necessary
information for scratch building the navigators compartment. Istarted by making
the vacform torpedo and the engines and propellers. I did both at the same time
so I could work on one when the other was drying etc. The torpedo is a basic shape
that requires a bit of scratch building of propellers, fins etc. The engines lack
detail but I found no reference but they are well hidden in the nacelles so you
don't notice. the propellers are easy. The next thing the instructions say is
to build the fuselage and this is where the fun begins.
bravenet.com